diplomacy

Eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable.

Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.

You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.

The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.

You're in America now," I said. "Our idea of diplomacy is showing up with a gun in one hand and a sandwich in the other and asking which you'd prefer.

Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us.

That__ the key to walking through the Wall.... You have to first see it as not being a Wall, even though everyone you know still sees it as a Wall.

Mankind's greatest achievements have come about by talking and its greatest failures by not talking. It doesn__ have to be like this.

A diplomat who says __es_ means __aybe", a diplomat who says __aybe" means __o_, and a diplomat who says __o_ is no diplomat.

Conversation, like certain portions of the anatomy, always runs more smoothly when lubricated.

Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.

People who keep their feelings to themselves tend not to know, after a while, what their feelings are.